Page 20 of The Unknown Birds

“You always follow stupid orders?” Rook asked, and they hung their heads in shame, but his gaze was boring into Ashley, and she was warmed all over by its fire.

Thank you, she told him with a nod, and he nodded back in reply.

“Cap’s looking for one of you two,” Dusty told Ash and Tom.

“Why them?” Blake demanded.

Dusty slid an annoyed look over him and shrugged. He wasn’t the type to question his captain’s orders. “Because they have an ounce of sense between the pair of them? Seeing as you’re the only one in uniform, you should probably go,” he added to Ash.

Rook winked at her, and she tucked her chin to hide her flaming cheeks and ever-broadening smile.

How terribly inconvenient that after eighteen years of life, Ash would fall in love with a boy who thought she was also a boy, and she could never tell him the truth or risk everything going to pieces.

Dusty stayed behind with the others while Ash and Rook walked back to camp to see the captain.

“Thank you for that. Good timing. Well done, you. How’d you know they’d taken us?”

He eyed her stoically. She was talking too much. The pain of her swelling eye, and the adrenaline of such a close call—and walking alone with him in the moonlight—had all made her giddy.

“Dusty saw them grab you. I just got roped in.”

“I’m glad you did. You can be roped in anytime.” She winced, hearing herself.

“Why didn’t you disrobe like the others?” he asked.

“I… it was a stupid order, like you said.”

“You weren’t afraid?”

“I was so afraid!” she blurted out, and then immediately regretted the admission. “But I—I suppose I was more afraid of what would happen next.”

“Mmpf,” he grunted in agreement. “You didn’t look afraid.”

“Didn’t I?”

“You looked like an angry little bird waiting for the right moment to peck their eyes out.”

She laughed. “Suppose I wanted to.”

“Why’s that funny?”

“Someone back home used to call me Sp—Sparrow for much the same reason,” she said, catching herself before she used the German word. “You should’ve seen me fighting in the streets when I was a little… child.”

“Sparrow? Magpie more like, with all this chatter,” he teased, and there was something raw and tender in his voice which, instead of hurting Ashley’s feelings, helped her settle. “Keep being careful whose orders you follow. But also whose you ignore,” he warned, then nodded towards the barn where Captain Davies was waiting.

Inside, Davies was poring over papers on his makeshift desk. He looked up when she knocked and waved for her to enter.

“Ashley. Good. Would you care for a cup of—to be honest, rather tepid—tea?”

“Yes, please,” she replied with such enthusiasm he chuckled, but after the ordeal with Reid she needed a cup, no matter how lukewarm.

While he poured it, she examined an old jam jar filled with bugs sitting on his desk.

“Glow-worms,” he explained.

“Sir?”

“Beetles, actually. The females are especially bioluminescent when looking for a mate.”